What's Happening?

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Since its inception, the Field Book Project has evolved from a single project focused on cataloging Smithsonian collections into a growing portfolio of projects, at first focusing on enhancing access to those same collections through conservation and digitization of the Smithsonian materials, and now as a multi-institutional digital initiative to provide open access to field notes through the Biodiversity Heritage Library. As with so many long-term projects or programs, staff have come and gone over the years. Many of those staff have made significant contributions and we try to share adequate thanks and acknowledgment for each.

Two individuals who were especially key to the project’s success—Rusty Russell, one of the original PI’s, and Lesley Parilla, the project’s longest serving cataloger—recently moved on to new positions. Both were integral to the project and we couldn’t be more grateful for their contributions. So with great pleasure, the current project team extends both their congratulations on the next phase of their respective careers and acknowledgement to both for their contributions.

Rusty Russell

In fact, when we look back it’s truly hard to imagine the Field Book Project taking off in quite the way it did without Rusty’s own intellectual investment and collaborative spirit. At the time the project kicked off, Rusty was serving as Collections Manager in the Department of Botany in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In many ways, it was his interest in the United States Exploring Expedition, also known as the Wilkes Expedition, and his efforts to track down some of the original source materials that became a major impetus for the project. A four-year voyage from 1838-1842, the Wilkes Expedition covered an impressive expanse of land and sea, including regions of the Pacific Northwest, down to Tierra del Fuego, on to Antarctica, not to mention the Fiji Islands. The expedition resulted in one of the largest, early collections of natural history specimens and artifacts—related not just to botany, but also ornithology, marine biology, anthropology and other fields—to be deposited in what was then known as the National Museum.

As with so many expeditions and other collecting events, over time the field notes and other original documentation from this expedition had become separated from the specimens and artifacts. If you’ve been following the Field Book Project blog, you already know that scientists’ field notes can be especially tricky to track down as they are often treated as what we refer to as “ancillary collections”, that is material that might support understanding of the main collections but because of their format are generally not managed using the same catalogs as those collections. As a result, field notes might be found in libraries, archives, or curators’ offices. And it can be quite difficult to know not only which department to start with but even which museum. Thus it can quickly become a wild goose chase.

For Rusty, though, rather than simply focusing all of his time and energy on finding the field notes relevant to his own interests, he started asking the bigger question: how can we make these kinds of materials easier to find in general?

Those who know Rusty will not be surprised that he approached the question in his typical collaborative fashion and began discussing possible strategies with colleagues both within and beyond the Smithsonian. Then, in 2009, he and Anne Van Camp, Director of Smithsonian Institution Archives, submitted a successful grant proposal to the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). As enthusiasm for the project spread, additional funding was brought in to support conservation and digitization of Smithsonian field notes, thanks to Smithsonian Women’s Committee, Save America’s Treasures, and others. More recently, the Arcadia Fund also provided generous funding, enabling us to continue both cataloging and digitizing Smithsonian field book collections, and CLIR has provided additional support to collaborate across 10 institutions to digitize and provide open access to their field note collections as well.

Lesley Parilla

Lesley Parilla was one of our first catalogers, joining the project in 2011 as part of that first CLIR grant, so she was with us as the project continued to evolve. Lesley was already part of the Smithsonian family when she started, having worked as part of the Entomology Department where she took on a variety of tasks, including creating finding aids for field books and oral histories. Her transition to the Field Book Project seemed a natural fit!

In her six years with us, Lesley helped catalog almost half of the field books cataloged for the project so far. That’s over 4000 field book records! Not to mention the over 700 related collection and authority records she created as well. To say that Lesley’s work has increased the discoverability of Smithsonian’s field books would be an understatement. As the project progressed, Lesley also started taking on more responsibilities beyond cataloging, from managing the field book record database and website, to creating project documentation and training our interns. To better reflect her increased responsibilities, in 2015 Lesley became our Cataloging Coordinator, juggling her cataloging work along with the other behind-the-scenes tasks.

A great thing about having Lesley on the project was her knack for stories. She was always coming across interesting stories and threads when cataloging, and was happy to share her finds. She was a regular contributor to our different social media outlets (including this blog) where she would write about the fascinating things she found while cataloging field books. The topics that could pique her interest spanned the gamut. One day she could write about how the study of an expedition is supported by field books, herbarium sheets and published material, the next she would share an illustration of Albatross courtship behavior, and finally she’d write about how often researchers seemed to come across moonshiners in the field. Regardless of the topic at hand, what was always evident was Lesley’s enthusiasm for the project, the field books, and the researchers. Lesley’s eye for interesting details was our gain. This compelling storytelling wasn’t limited to the Field Book Project social media accounts. Lesley is a gregarious storyteller, and on any given day will have something new to share with friends and coworkers, be it about the material she is cataloging or the career of chef Jacques Pépin. Lesley moved on earlier this year to become an original cataloger for Smithsonian Libraries. While we were sad to see her leave the project, we are so happy her skills and enthusiasm will be supporting the Smithsonian in other ways.

Rusty has also since moved on and is now Director of the Gantz Family Collections Center at the Field Museum of Natural History. While we miss having Rusty at the Smithsonian, we are incredibly happy for him and the Field Museum. It is also perhaps a bit serendipitous for us, too, as the Library at the Field Museum is not only a BHL Member but also one of the partners on the current CLIR grant. So we’re feeling pretty lucky that they have a new leader in their corner who understands and loves field notes as much as we do.

So a hearty congratulations to Rusty and Lesley and warmest wishes to you both from the Smithsonian Field Book Project and BHL Field Notes Project teams!

Friday, 12 August 2016

The Field Book Project would like to welcome our newest staff member, Brittany Hance, who will be working as the Project digitization technician at Smithsonian Institution Archives. Originally from Florida, Brit came to the Washington, DC in 2013 as an Intern for the Office of Photography and Media at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and soon became a contract photographer, assisting in digitization projects within the National Anthropological Archives and Anthropology Collections, as well as photographing anything imaginable for NMNH.

She holds a B.F.A. in Fine Arts Photography and loves exploring new technologies in digitization and advances in photography. She is excited to begin her work with the FBP.

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Field Book Project is happy to welcome our summer 2016 interns who are at the Smithsonian as part of Smithsonian Libraries. The interns are primarily working on cataloging field book collections and expanding biographical descriptions for field book creator records.

Nurganym Agzamova

Nurganym (Nura) Agzamova is a Foreign Fulbright Scholar from Kazakhstan. She is currently a second year graduate student in the Library and Information Science program at Syracuse University. Prior to starting her Fulbright experience, she worked as a librarian at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan where she worked as a Subject Librarian for the Foundation Program. She started her library career at National Academic Library of Kazakhstan in Patron Services back in 2008. Nura is a native speaker of Kazakh and Russian, and was involved in translation projects as a freelance interpreter and translator. Nura sees the Field Book as a unique opportunity to learn about cataloging processes for archives. The Field Book Project will help Nura to gain additional skills and experience that she will be bringing back home upon completion of her Fulbright grant.

Conal Huetter

Conal Huetter is originally from Seattle, Washington, and earned his B.A. in History from Western Washington University. He is a recent graduate from the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, receiving am Master of Library Science degree with a specialization in Archives and Digital Curation. He is particularly interested in how archives can be used to tell the stories of groups that are often underrepresented in society.

Allegra Tennis

Allegra Tennis is a current student at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology, Life Science, and Chemistry at Iowa Wesleyan College in 2011, and went on to work as a lab technician for several years before beginning graduate school. In Wisconsin, she is employed as a Metadata Specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Publications Warehouse, and as a Reference Student Assistant at Wisconsin’s College Library. In her free time, Allegra enjoys reading, needlework, tabletop games, and travel.

During this month of February, the Smithsonian Field Book Project is celebrating Frederick William True, who worked at the Smithsonian from 1881 until 1914 and held a variety of positions during his career, including Smithsonian Librarian, Curator of the Division of Mammals, Executive Curator of the United States National Museum, Head Curator of the Department of Biology, and Assistant Secretary in charge of the Library and International Exchange Service. True is an outstanding example of the deep connections among what may seem like separate Departments, Divisions, and units at the Smithsonian, which still exist even today.

His field books showcase the close associations True embodied: today, one is held by the Division of Mammals, one by the Division of Birds, one by the Department of Paleobiology, and six by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Through the Field Book Project, these and other field books can be reunited, digitally and online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Smithsonian Collections Search Center.

This month, in collaboration with its partners, the Field Book Project will be coordinating a series of blogs about FW True’s life and contributions to science. These blogs will provide a background for and culminate in a Smithsonian Transcription Center #FWTrueLove challenge, beginning on Valentine’s Day, to engage interested audiences and Volunpeers in True’s written legacy and see how much we can transcribe in as little as one week! Nick Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals, will help to lead the challenge by engaging with the Volunpeers on social media and providing additional information as the Volunpeers make their way through True’s materials. Details about that challenge, including the special Kellogg Library collections tour (featuring items actually touched by F. W. True!) Dr. Pyenson will offer to those who participate, will be released later this month on the Field Book Project blog. Again, the blog series will begin on this Thursday, February 5th, and the Transcription Challenge on Saturday, February 14th. Stay tuned and please join in the fun!

This celebration is a collaborative effort between multiple Smithsonian units and departments, including the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Smithsonian Libraries and Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Smithsonian Transcription Center, and the NMNH Department of Paleobiology in order to showcase the unique breadth and depth of the archival science materials here at the Institution.

Thursday, 22 January 2015

As part of the Field Book Project’s mission to increase accessibility to field book content, the conservation team conducts condition surveys of field notebooks in various divisions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). These surveys give us a better understanding of a collection’s particular conservation needs, helping us determine which items need stabilization treatment in order to be safely handled, which need better housing for long term storage, and which are ready to be digitized and transcribed. While surveying the field books in the Division of Birds, Chris Milensky, a Museum Specialist in the Division, pointed out a wonderful collection of letters, specimen cards, and field notebooks of Professor D.B. Burrows, a collector and student of bird eggs and nests.

Chris Milensky holding the Burrows papers

The D.B. Burrows collection is exactly the kind of thing that gets us excited here at the Field Book Project. As it turned out, this collection had not yet being cataloged by FBP team member Lesley Parilla, and was also in need of new housing and conservation treatment, Lesley began by creating a cataloging record for the papers and field books and at the same time performed some initial rehousing, placing the items in labeled, archival-quality folders and document boxes.

Lesley rehoused the papers into folders and document boxes.

Once Lesley began cataloging, she brought the newly rehoused items to me here in the conservation lab. In this case, the conservation treatment of the D.B. Burrows papers occurs simultaneously with cataloging as many of the items have inaccessible information which requires treatment before it can be accessed and added to the catalog record. For example, there are many letters in their original envelopes which need to be carefully unfolded, flattened, and then rehoused before Lesley can read them and incorporate details about their authors, dates, and recipients into a catalog entry PHOTO 3

Rehousing for D. B. Burrow correspondence.

The treatment and cataloging of the D.B. Burrows papers is ongoing and will take some time, particularly with the large volume of correspondence that requires, as mentioned above, very careful treatment in order to be conserved. However, when they are complete, the D.B. Burrows papers will be digitized and sent to the Smithsonian Transcription Center, where digital volunteers and citizen archivists can help transcribe D.B. Burrow’s writings. Not much information is available about Burrows online, and we here at the Field Book Project look forward to adding to the digital body of knowledge about this interesting scholar!

We're excited to announce our latest Flickr set, images from the field work of Watson Perrygo in Haiti, 1928-1929.

Watson M. Perrygo (1906-1984) was a field collector, taxidermist, and exhibits specialist for the United States National Museum (USNM). During his career at the Museum he traveled extensively and conducted field work with several notable scientists, including Alexander Wetmore and Remington Kellogg.

In 1928 to 1929, Perrygo traveled and collected specimens with W. M. Poole in Haiti. Photographs in this Flickr set were selected from Perrygo’s personal papers to demonstrate the range of natural history and local communities he observed and documented.

Tuesday, 23 September 2014

We’re excited to announce our latest Flickr set from the field work of Charles D. Walcott in Montana during the summers of 1904 and 1905. This set of images highlights the work of Walcott who was the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and perhaps best known for his discovery of the Burgess Shale fossils in Canada.

Walcott was unique in the way he utilized photography in his field work. He not only used photos to document his finds, but eventually used them to choose field sites. By the time he discovered the Burgess Shale, Walcott was utilizing panorama photographs that he took with a specially built camera for the purpose.

Images in this set provide a unique overlap of his field note format choices (text, photograph, sketch) for specific sites. We encourage you to compare the photos, their annotations, the caption details, and his narrative descriptions and sketches.

Tuesday, 02 September 2014

The Field Book Project is pleased to welcome to new members to our team: Julia Blase, Field Book Project Manager, and Andrea Hall, Field Book Project conservator.

Julia Blase, 2014. Courtesy of ??

Julia will be managing day-to-day project operations and coordinating communications between project partners. She has an MLIS from Denver University, an MMS from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and a BA from Duke University. She comes to the Field Book Project from the National Digital Stewardship Residency, a fellowship program with the Library of Congress, where she spent the last year completing a digital asset management analysis, needs assessment, and strategic plan for the National Security Archive.

Andrea Hall, 2013. Courtesy of Kirsten Tyree.

Andrea Hall will be providing conservation assessment and care for field book collections. She originally worked on the Project as an intern in the Fall of 2013. She attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio where she received a B.S. in Biology and has honed her conservation skills at Bowling Green State University Library, Botany Department of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, the Preservation Department of the University of Virginia Libraries just to name a few. We are thrilled to have her rejoining the team in her new role.

We are also pleased to make available the first catalog records for collections in the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, covering the work of Frank Whitmore and Remington Kellogg. The Paleobiology records will enhance the field book catalog records that already exist in Division of Mammals and Smithsonian Institution Archives for these two collectors.

The Field Book Project has documented the papers of several scientists who worked closely together for periods of time, or had long associations, but few seem as closely linked as Edward William Nelson and Edward Alphonso Goldman. My first introduction to Nelson and Goldman was while cataloging in the Division of Mammals, at National Museum of Natural History. A researcher was in the archive verifying Nelson and Goldman specimen numbers. I was amazed to realize that for the period of time that they collected together, even their names were combined in their specimen numbering system.

Nelson and Goldman worked for the US Biological Survey and together are known for their field work in Mexico, 1892-1906. The partnership that would prove so important to both men began, when Nelson went on a new assignment to the San Joaquin Valley for the US Biological Survey. He had recently completed work on the Expedition to Death Valley, and was heading through California when the singletree on his buckboard wagon broke. Nelson met a rancher (Goldman’s father) who assisted with the repair. As the two talked, they discovered a shared interest in natural sciences. During the course of conversation, Nelson mentioned the need of an assistant. Goldman’s father suggested his 18-year-old son who was working at a vineyard in Fresno, California. Goldman sent for his son. This first meeting must have gone well; Goldman accepted the position as Nelson’s assistant, leaving his current job where he made $56 a month, with board included, to work for Nelson for $30 a month plus board which Nelson paid out of his own salary.

After a trial period collecting together in the San Joaquin Valley proved satisfactory, Nelson and Goldman made their first joint collecting trip into western Mexico. The trip was to take 3 months, but lasted four years. In 1892, Goldman received a federal appointment as assistant field agent, through Nelson’s recommendation. Eventually they would jointly collect for 14 years.

With over 43 million pages of the published biodiversity literature, BHL has greatly improved the efficiency of access to the published literature--much of which was previously available online in limited physical copies in but a few select libraries in the developed world. As unique primary source documents, field books present similar challenges and we are very pleased to provide another layer of access to these important materials.

Scientists' field notes are, in many ways, the precursors to the published literature. Journals (the unpublished kind), diaries, collecting lists, photo albums, and other primary source documentation of collecting events can enhance not only the scientific understanding of what has already been published but can also provide insights into the historical, sometimes even personal, context behind the research.

In addition to making these available alongside the related literature in BHL, we are especially pleased to see these notes joining the 62 other field notes that are already in BHL thanks to the Connecting Content project. The original vision for the Field Book Project was to create one online location for field books, regardless of physical location. Now you can view the Smithsonian field notes alongside those from the California Academy of Science, Missouri Botanical Garden, New York Botanical Garden, Harvard Botany Libraries and Museum of Comparative Zoology. And with the crowdsourcing transcription efforts underway both at the Smithsonian Transcription Center and kicking off with BHL's Purposeful Gaming project earlier this month, we're looking forward to seeing more great things come out of the continued partnership!

The Harriman Alaska Expedition (1899) is the fascinating--and true--story of a railroad tycoon's family vacation and scientific expedition rolled into one. After his physician recommended a vacation to combat exhaustion, Edward Henry Harriman, President of the Union Pacific Railroad, began planning a big game hunt for his family. Exhausted as he may have been, though, he remained ambitious even in rest. By the time they set sail for Alaska on May 31, 1899, the family vacation transformed into a full-scale exploring expedition. The list of participants reads like a roll call of renowned scientists, naturalists, and artists of the time, many of whom whose names are still well-known today: Clinton Hart Merriam, Frederick Vernon Coville, Thomas Kearney, William Healey Dall, Robert Ridgway, and over a hundred others.

Not surprisingly, the expedition resulted in several publications, including the Harriman Alaska Seriesa multi-volume report on Alaska's geography and biodiversity, including insects, crustaceans, and invertebrates. The two photo albums were assembled as souvenirs for expedition participants and include hundreds of photographs, the bulk of which show Alaskan landscapes and glaciers as they appeared in 1899. While some photographs from the expedition were also included in the reports and other publications, as a whole, these albums help to fill in our contextual understanding of the place and time in which Alaska's biodiversity was being recorded by the Harriman Expedition. They also offer a glimpse into the human experience of the expedition, from a family outing on Lowe Inlet to a fire drill aboard the George W. Elder.

Friday, 23 May 2014

Visual documentation—photographs, sketches, illustrations, video—can be a powerful tool for recording observations, with or without text. Each method has inherent benefits and drawbacks. A sketch may not be as “accurate” as a photograph, but a few lines of a sketch may record exactly the detail a collector wishes to remember. A photograph can be a great way to record behaviors that occur quickly, or details for later study. Just take a look at the field notes of Martin H. Moynihan, and see what I mean.

M. Moynihan was the first Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and a noted authority on animal behavior. His field notes are packed with images documenting the behaviors and interactions of the wildlife he observed. He chose to study a startlingly wide array of fauna: primates, birds, and squid. For each, he utilized drawing and photography, depending in the needs and challenges of the work.

Images in this Flickr set were selected to demonstrate how the method chosen affects the information imparted in his notes. Moynihan’s spare and elegant manner of drawing is particularly adept at proving how drawings can clarify or highlight a particular trait.

At the Field Book Project, we've come across married couples that worked together in the field, but few quite like Vernon Orlando Bailey (1864-1942) and Florence Merriam Bailey (1863-1948). Not only did both enjoy long, fruitful careers in their respective fields, but they also have their own field documentation. Vernon Bailey worked as a Field Biologist for the US Biological Survey, and wrote and collected extensively for the organization. Florence Bailey was known for her study and writing in the field of ornithology.

The Smithsonian Transcription Center recently added field books from both of these individuals to those awaiting volunteer input. In order to highlight this couple's unique contributions, the Field Book Project has launched a new Flickr set of images from their personal papers.

Kangaroo rat specimen, Continental, Arizona, 1921. Photograph taken by Sterling Bunnell for Vernon Orlando Bailey. Bailey worked as a field naturalist for the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Biological Survey. Bailey was particularly interested in rodents, especially Dipodomys, or kangaroo rat. Smithsonian Institution Archives. Record Unit 007267, Box 5 Folder 12. SIA2011-1399.

Both Florence and Vernon advocated for the wildlife they studied. Much of Florence Merriam Bailey’s field work and writing focused on the protection of birds, and she was a strong proponent for the use of binoculars instead of shotguns to observe them. Vernon Bailey had a long-held concern for humane animal population control. He went so far as to design and manufacture more humane traps and educate the public on their use. Images include field photographs Vernon Bailey used in relation to his work for more humane trapping techniques. Images from the Florence Bailey field book document her field work and travels.

Friday, 21 March 2014

Spring is finally here! It’s been a long winter for much of the United States, so we at the Field Book Project wanted to celebrate Spring's arrival. What better way is there than with images from our collections?

The Flickr set includes photographs taken by Helmut Karl Buechner during field work he completed in Texas, May 1947. These images document his observations of Pronghorn shortly have their birth.

The Field Book Project is excited to announce its latest Flickr set, images from the work of Helmut Buechner. Buechner came to the Smithsonian in 1969 as the first Director of the Office of Ecology. He later served as Senior Ecologist for the Office of Environmental Sciences at the National Zoological Park.

Over the course of his career, he worked and traveled in western United States and Africa. The images selected document his field work from in the Pacific Northwest and Wyoming from 1949 to 1954, while he was an professor at Washington State College (now University), and demonstrate some of the types of observations he used in his work.

An increasing number of field books are available online in two digitized forms.

You might notice that with this update, there are now 2 types of online media available. Each of our most recent updates has included downloadable PDF versions of digitized field books. These are listed as electronic resources and now include 427 PDFs.

There are now 109 images listed under online media that offer the user the ability to look at an increasing number of the field books through Collection Search Center’s gallery viewer. The gallery viewer enables a user to see the digitized field book 10 pages at a time without downloading the item. This means that a researcher can view a portion of the field book more quickly, and without having to download it in its entirety, as is necessary with the PDF version. The gallery viewer also allows the user to zoom in closer on the individual pages while still retaining clarity and detail in the image, something that can occasionally be lost in the compressed PDF. This is especially true with smaller field books.

Screenshot of digitized field book in Smithsonian Collection Search Center, viewed with gallery viewer.

An increasing number of the field books are now available in both forms online. If the field book is available through the gallery viewer, you can see it by clicking the thumbnail image seen in the collapsed record. If you wish to download an available PDF version, expand the record and click on a digitized copy under additional online media.

Additional online media provides the link to the downloadable PDF for field books available in both online forms.

Friday, 29 November 2013

On Friday, November 15th 2013, thousands of teachers visited the National Museum of Natural History for Smithsonian Teachers’ Night. This annual event provides teachers the opportunity to meet Smithsonian staff and learn about educational resources at the Institution. The Field Book Project was on hand to let teachers know about the great lesson plans and primary sources that we have available for them on our website. Check us out here in case you could not make it out!

Friday, 22 November 2013

The Field Book Project has been pleased to be one of the first contributors of materials to Smithsonian’s Transcription Center that went live earlier this year. Recently Smithsonian Transcription Center set up a challenge for its volunteers to complete transcription of a field book on Honeycreepers recorded by M. Moynihan as part of the Contribute and Connect initiative. Volunteers quickly met the challenge, and as a result had the chance to talk with Field Book Project staff member Lesley Parilla about the background of the Project as well as learn about some of the unique aspects and unexpected finds she’s run across during her three years with the Project.

The webcast was hosted by one of the Smithsonian’s Presidential Innovation Fellows, Jason Shen. The event provided a chance to share details about some of the Project’s wide variety of materials, including surprising finds from collectors like Edmund Heller who was part of the Smithsonian African Expedition with Theodore Roosevelt. Viewers also saw examples of some of the visual field documentation recorded by collectors like William Mann, while procuring live animals for the National Zoological Park during the 1930’s and 40’s. William and Lucile Mann kept detailed scrapbooks and photograph albums that include images of the animals, sites, local inhabitants, as well as ephemera like menus, passenger lists from ships, and other materials that provide a unique glimpse into travel of the era.

Friday, 18 October 2013

The Field Book Project has launched a new Flickr set, inspired by field photographs of Sand and Johnson Island, cataloged from Record Unit 000245, Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP), 1961-1973.

Many of the images document the LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) tower station that was at Johnston Atoll; several are taken from various vantage points. These images demonstrate some of the heights scientific collectors are willing to go for their field work.

Friday, 13 September 2013

The Field Book Project is pleased to announce our latest update to the catalog records and digitized field books available on the Smithsonian Collections Search Center. This update includes new field book records, expanded abstracts for existing authority files, as well as 130 recently digitized field books, bringing the total to nearly 400 items!

There are now nearly 8,800 records documenting field books from seven departments of the National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Institution Archives. To expedite researcher’s use of these records, we’ve also created a list of search tips for navigating Smithsonian Collections Search Center.

So come take a look at the new content, and check out our new FAQ page. Do you have a field book record research question not answered by the FAQ’s? Let us know in the comments!

The Field Book Project has launched a new Flickr set, inspired by the many field photographs we have cataloged from Record Unit 000245, Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP), 1961-1973. The Program deployed over 40 Smithsonian Institution employees to conduct biological surveys of plants and animals that occurred on the islands and atolls. A major focus was determining migration, distribution, and populations of seabirds.

These images were selected from a series of photographs taken by program staff to document development of the various pelagic birds studied on Kiritimati Island and Kure Atoll. Among the images is a series documenting the development of a Great Frigatebird, from 1 to 140 days old.

Fregata minor chick on Kiritimati Island (1967) was photographed to document its development, as part of field work completed during the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program. RU 000245, Box 220, Folder 16, Envelope 2. SIA2013-07652.

Fregata minor chick on Kiritimati Island (1967) was photographed to document its development, as part of field work completed during the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program. RU 000245, Box 220, Folder 16, Envelope 2. SIA2013-07675.

To encourage inexperienced editors and show them how they can contribute to Wikipedia

To improve a selection of Wikipedia articles related to scientists and expeditions

To make Smithsonian-held materials more openly linked

To test a new transcribing tool to make our field books more findable and useful

To increase awareness of the research resources freely available through libraries, archives, and museums

Attendees of the Field Notes Edit-a-Thon 2013, by Wikipedia user Slowking4

We’re thrilled to say that the 18 participants who joined us made fantastic progress on each of these goals. Those new to Wikipedia editing (myself included!) were made to feel welcome and received lots of great pointers on creating and editing articles. Altogether, four new pages were created and seven articles were updated with additional content and links. We’ve written before about the benefits of providing links between affiliated field book creators so that researchers can more easily find materials produced as a result of collaborations, affiliations, or participation on expeditions. So it should come as no surprise that we are thrilled that so many hyperlinks were added as part of the day’s editing activities. Several participants also tried out the Smithsonian’s new beta transcription site and provided valuable feedback. You can read more about the day’s events, including the wonderful tour of the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, on the Smithsonian Institution Archives’ blog: http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/field-notes-wikipedia-edit-thon.

You can help!

Although the event itself is over, you can actually still help us improve the Wikipedia articles on the Explorers & Expeditions to-do list and in making Smithsonian-held field books more openly linked. To get started, just visit the to-do list page and pick a topic of interest to you. Be sure to check out the possible reference resources listed for each topic and feel free to use and cite any new references that you find!

New to Wikipedia editing or looking for more guidance? Check out Meghan Ferriter’s (event co-organizer and SIA research associate) Tips & Tricks for creating Wikipedia articles.

Although the project started out as a cataloging initiative in 2010, we recognized
early on the need for not just remote access to the catalog records but also to
the rich and varied content found in field books. Starting with a grant from the Smithsonian
Women’s Committee, and continuing with the ongoing efforts of the Smithsonian
Institution Archives’ Digital Services, we are thrilled to begin seeing this
goal realized.

The page scans that are now online provide great
representation of the variety of topics and formats that field books can
take. For starters, there are numerous ship logs from the Albatross documenting voyages
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Built
in 1882, the Albatross was one of the first large vessels designed specifically
for marine research. The Albatross logbooks contain
a wealth of information, not just about species, but about weather and other environmental
conditions at the time. As demonstrated
by projects like OldWeather, ship log
data can be extremely useful for understanding historic climate patterns and helping
scientists model projections. If you dig old ships and marine biodiversity, check out our earlier post on the Albatross collection: http://nmnh.typepad.com/fieldbooks/2012/10/new-uses-for-old-books.html.

Some of the other field books now online provide a look into
terrestrial research. From herpetologist
James A. Peters, you can get a sense of what it was like to conduct field work
in Mexico in 1949 and read detailed descriptions of some of the specimens he
saw. Peters' Field Notes: Mexico, 1949 also includes a bit of an unexpected treat--a sketch of a
horse and buggy can be found inserted between his pages of notes.

Harrison G. Dyar’s field books, or “blue books”, are some of
my personal favorites and several of these are also now available. These include detailed notes on his daily observations and frequently include sketches. Dyar was a renowned entomologist whose
personal life is perhaps as well remembered as his professional life. He served as honorary curator of Lepidoptera at
the Smithsonian and as a mosquito specialist for the USDA. He is perhaps best known for his peculiar
habit of digging elaborate tunnels under his two homes in Washington D.C.

Alexander Wetmore and Watson Perrygo in El Valle, Cocle, Panama, on 31 March 1951. Photograph included in the transcript of the Watson M. Perrygo Oral History Interviews by Pamela M. Henson, November 13, 1976, in Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA2008-2948.

The panel presentation discussed current efforts by staff at Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) to connect collections and reach new audiences, through ongoing cataloging, digitization, and online exhibits. We focused on efforts relating to the materials that document Smithsonian’s long history of research in the Panama Canal Zone.

Institution Historian, Pamela Henson opened the session by introducing the Smithsonian’s role in the Survey of the Panama Canal 1910-1912, the work of scientists and collectors like Alexander Wetmore and Watson Perrygo, and the role of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in ongoing research.

My portion of the panel session focused on Field Book Project cataloging methods and how these records can help researchers reconnect types of natural history documentation; followed by managing the flow of digital information (Kira Cherrix); and wrapping up with how to reach and engage new audiences with the resources we’re making available online (Courtney Bellizzi).

Over the last few years, SIA has strived to not only to make more archival resources available to the public in digital form but to do so in a way that is consistent, thorough, and will stand up to constantly changing technological standards. For my colleagues and I, this is in many ways our day-to-day work; it was exciting to step back and actually hear and discuss how it is taking shape.

The Field Book Project's core mission is to locate, identify and describe the field books of the Smithsonian in a registry available to the public. Over the past couple of years, the Project has generated thousands of records and made them available online through the Smithsonian’s Collection Search Center (SCSC). Through the efforts of SIA and a grant from Smithsonian Women’s Committee, we have also been able to begin imaging those field books. The field book catalog records in the registry provide the heart of the metadata for each one digitized.

Participating on this panel provided a great opportunity to illustrate just how these records enable connections between multiple collections. Field Book Registry catalog records don’t just provide metadata for the digitized field books. Collection and creator catalog records play an important role in providing context for the digitized items. My presentation discussed how creator records are proving useful in reestablishing connections between field books, specimens, and scientific publications. Want to learn more? The Field Book Presentation is available as a PDF
[Download EAC_and_Panama_pres_parilla].

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

In December, the Field Book Project made thousands of field book records publicly available and searchable through the Smithsonian’s Collection Search Center. After two years of cataloging efforts funded through the Council on Library and Information Resources, records describing over 6,000 individual field books spanning over 500 collections by number of individuals are now online.

In addition to the release of records, The Field Book Project has been promoting field book content via social media sites Flickr and Twitter, as well as here on our blog hosted on TypePad. Social media allows us to reach new audiences and connect in new ways. The Field Book Project blog posted its first article in March 2011; it now has over 200 posts, over 44,000 page views, and more than 100 comments. Blog articles highlighting field book content are posted about twice per week, and generate a substantial amount of traffic. Thank you to our readers for following our activities!

Flickr, a photo-based social media platform, allows us to share images of field book content with an audience that is visually-oriented. The Field Book Project regularly contributes images to the Smithsonian’s Flickr Commons photo stream.

A photo of a previously unknown specimen was posted to Flickr where users quickly identified it. See the original photo here.

Twitter allows the Field Book Project (@FieldBookProj) to reach out on an informal level to a huge community of active content creators in the fields of biodiversity, museums, archives, libraries, natural history, and more. Through this network we have been able to reach individuals who might not have otherwise heard of the Project. Though our Twitter presence is still quite young, Twitter allows us to reach new users, and connect them with links to blog articles, images, and other content.

While increased exposure for our Project is important, engaging with social media is not just about pushing content out towards new audiences. It is also about opening up a dialogue. Over the past two years we’ve worked to bring guest bloggers in to offer their insights on field books. Guests have included Smithsonian staff external to the Field Book Project, as well as colleagues from other museums, schools, and herbaria. Posts contributed by individuals outside of our Project bring new and different perspectives, questions, and ideas, and help all of us better understand the potential of field books.

Flickr and Twitter also expand the conversation around field books. On Flickr, users can tag images, “favorite” them, add them to galleries, and comment. Comments range from appreciation to questions about the collections to identifications of specimens. Via Twitter, users can ask us questions, give us feedback, and share our content with others.

As the Project moves forward, it’s more important than ever to promote the fruits of our cataloging labors. The public release of field book records not only makes it easier for Smithsonian staff to find related field book content, it opens up our collections to a much broader, international audience. Promoting our content via social media outlets promotes awareness of field books as research resources and opens up a dialogue about field book content. We encourage you to join in and to follow us!

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Today we are celebrating another Field Book Project milestone: our 200th blog post. Since our first post in March 2011, the project has featured regular posts by staff, interns, volunteers, and guest bloggers. We decided to take a cue from our friends over at Smithsonian Collections Blog who recently celebrated their 500th post by highlighting some of their favorites. We were intrigued by this idea of reflection, and decided to try it ourselves. We asked Field Book Project staff members and advisors, “What past blog post is near and dear to you and why?” Below, you’ll find their responses.

I love the Field Book Project blog. It is hard to pick one favorite because I have so many favorite stories told through this blog. But I am choosing to highlight this particular entry by Scott Thybony, a guest blogger, who wrote a wonderful vignette about the human side of field work. This resonates with me because I have always been curious about how it felt to be out in the field pioneering new territory and making notes about the daily finds and the trials and tribulations that come with field work. A humanist by nature, I appreciate the extraordinary work that scientists and explorers have done to help us better understand our world. So, this blog touched me and made me wish I had written something like it. Perhaps I will.

Selecting my favorite blog post from among the many outstanding contributions by both our staff and outside colleagues is an unfair request. Every one of them has been thoughtfully composed and artfully written. But, since I’m not being allowed to beg out that way, I have chosen “one” that speaks to many issues that inspired the Field Book Project. Janelle Winters was a summer intern from Yale, who worked on a project for me involving historic plant specimens from Arizona. Her two-part blog post (see how I did that) first sprang from this project. The result was a beautiful story that blended westward expansion, dramatic landscape changes, and personal history. This story exemplifies what I like to say about field books … that they are scientifically irreplaceable as well as highly personal.

One of my favorite posts explores the ethnobotanical field notes created by William Fisher while he was working as a tidal recorder in Alaska in 1899. It’s always inspiring when we come across the field notes of citizen scientists and other enthusiasts who avidly devote their free time to collecting or observing nature for scientific study. What I really enjoy about the post though is how Sonoe Nakasone, the post’s author, leads us through some precursory research into how Fisher’s notes on medicinal and food uses of collected plants line up with some contemporary resources available online. It’s fascinating to browse through some of these resources and learn about possible uses for local fauna in your area or to do a little research on medicinal uses for plants passed down through your own family. Potatoes for treating burns? Anyone?

Choose just one? Can’t! My two-ish: Tonto Basin series parts 1 and 2 by guest blogger Janelle Winters and Butterfly Vision by colleague Emily Hunter. The Tonto Basin series illustrates how information in field books can be pieces of larger stories—in this case a poignant one of ecological destruction. Winters also reminds us that field notes are windows into our past. Butterfly Vision was possibly the most original article we’ve posted. Hunter presents one of the most compelling examples of photographs as field notes, while giving equal weight to the biological and engineering accomplishments of her subject Robert Silberglied.

One of my favorite blog posts was Like Son, Like Father; Like Father, Like Son, about Edgar Alexander Mearns and his son, Louis di Zerega Mearns. It is not uncommon that the collectors whose work we catalog have familial connections in the sciences. In some cases they come to their careers through a spouse, sibling, or parent. However there are not a lot of examples in the field books demonstrating the familial relationship between the scientists while in the field. I found it very touching to read about the father and son’s close friendship and mutual respect.

My favorite blog post is Sonoe Nakasone’s story about James Eike, the bird-watching citizen scientist. Eike’s notes have such a personal touch that you don’t often find among the pages of specimen descriptions in other field books. It is hard not to get sucked into his field books because they occasionally read more like a diary than a list of bird observations. I think the fact that his field books spanned over 30 years of his life made it so that by the end, I felt sad to read about his death, and touched by his wife and daughter finishing out the book.

I loved guest-blogger Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie’s post The Boys of Summer. MacKenzie has a unique perspective on how historical field documentation is relevant to contemporary research; she studies climate and land use change on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and uses field notes in her research. The fascinating twist is this—the field notes she consulted were written by Harvard undergrad students on summer vacation, and yet, provide rich data for comparing to present day observations. Early citizen science!

-Emily Hunter, Cataloger and Social Media Coordinator, Field Book Project

The launch of these records
represents the first time they have been publicly available. Altogether, these
records describe 6,679 field books comprising 542 collections housed at the
Smithsonian Institution. A subset of these records includes digital images of
field books for viewing alongside the records. In addition to the detailed catalog records,
there are also 927 authority files providing biographical and historical
details for the persons, organizations, and expeditions involved in the
creation of these field books. A few months back, supervisory archivist Tammy
Peters blogged
about the significance of these records and the veritable social network they
form between collaborators, co-participants on expeditions, and institutional
affiliations.

Frederick V. Coville. SIA Acc. 90-105. SIA2008-0296.

Take
for instance Frederick Vernon Coville, a botanist and blueberry breeder, who
was the subject of one of our very first blog
posts. Looking at Coville’s authority file will tell you more about his
life and career. Use the file as a
springboard to find information on collections related to him, as well as
detailed descriptions about field books within those collections. From those field book records, access links
for expeditions Coville participated in, such as the Harriman Alaska
Expedition (1899). These links allow you to
view field books related to Coville’s expeditions or view records about those
expeditions. From the expedition
records, links are provided to learn more about other participants of that
expedition and the field books they created.

Authority file for Frederick Vernon Coville. Select the image of the record to view a larger version.

Authority file for the Harriman Alaska Expedition (1899). Select the image of the record to view a larger version.

We hope you’ll take a look around, search for
some of the scientists you’re familiar with, navigate through their collections
and field books, and explore materials created by some of their
collaborators.

Not sure where to start? Browse any of our blog posts by
discipline to find a person or topic of interest. Be sure to try out the
tagging option in Collections Search, too. And by all means, let us know what
you think!

In September of 2012, we launched a series of Flickr sets to highlight the wonderful visual content of our blog posts. These images document the wide variety of field books we catalog here at the Field Book Project, and were kindly digitized for us by the Smithsonian Institution Archives Digital Services. Being on Flickr gives us a chance to share content with a wider audience and users the chance to interact with images more directly (e.g. tagging and commenting) than is possible in the blog format.

This is the third installment in the series, available to through the Smithsonian’s Flickr Commons stream. The set includes 27 images that accompanied blog posts from 2011. These come from scrapbooks, journals, photographs, drawings, and logbooks, and document field work completed around the world, over the course of two centuries.

So take a look, comment, follow the url in the caption to the related blog post to learn more. We hope you enjoy the images as much as we do.

We’ve talked quite a bit on our blog about the variety of formats that field books may take, including photographs, sketches, maps, correspondence, journals, specimen lists, and more. I wanted to take a moment to discuss why visual field notes are important. Lists and diaries contain information like collector numbers, geographical names, specimen binomials, and all sorts of information for which it’s easy to see the use potential. They can be cross-referenced with the actual specimen labels, or offer missing or supplemental information. But what about visual materials? What can they offer that is useful or unique? Among other things, they can tell us specifically about specimens, the environment, and the collecting event.

Specimens

Photographs and sketches can give us important information about specimens that were collected or observed in the field. Together, words and sketches can give a fuller, richer description of specimens. As mentioned in a previous blog post, specimens, especially fish, can lose color and pattern information shortly after they are preserved—sketches can relate those details to us. Similarly, images of live or just-collected plants can give us information about the living individual that pressed plants can not. In a world before photography, sketches were critical for illustrating specimens (and also field work and the environment). When photography became more popular, it also became a tool for capturing this information.

Environment

Sketch of Kanab Canyon by Charles D. Walcott during his field work for
the US Geological Survey, October 15 - November 3, 1879. Smithsonian
Institution Archives. RU007004, Box 32, Folder 1. SIA SIA2012-9643.

Sketches, photographs, and maps can give us important information about the environment surrounding a collecting site; they can, quite literally, paint us a picture of a certain place as it existed at a certain time. We can use photographs and drawings from the field to answer questions such as:

What did the landscape look like?

What species were thriving?

What was missing or scarce?

How has this location changed?

Maps can also give us clues as to what the world looked like at a past time. They can illustrate old routes that existed before modern roads did, and indicate locations where specimens were observed or collected. Some maps preserve information about a past landscape or historical political borders. In a past blog post, Eleonore Dixon-Roche discussed how the landscape has changed since Joseph Rock visited and created his hand drawn maps.

Visual field notes can illustrate fieldwork for us in a way that textual documents simply cannot. Photographs show us what fieldwork looked like. We begin to see things like who was there, how a specimen was obtained, how it was transported, and the cultural context surrounding the collection.

Through images, we get a sense of what it might have been like to be a part of an historical expedition. Images like these speak to us; they illustrate scientific explorations, and communicate to us in a very human way so that we can relate to these past stories. They make it real!

--

Slides of this presentation are available on Slide Share. You may see a webcast of the presentation on YouTube.

Here at the Field Book Project, we’re busy bloggers. We usually churn out two blog posts per week, and sometimes limiting ourselves to that takes restraint. So, needless to say, we include a lot of pictures of field books to illustrate our blog posts. We’ve decided to share these images on the Smithsonian’s Flickr Commons stream.

Why post to Flickr Commons? There are a few reasons. First of all, the kind and talented folks in Smithsonian Institution Archives Digital Services regularly digitize materials for us to use to accompany our posts (in addition to regularly digitizing field books for the Field Book Registry). Flickr’s The Commons is already a thriving forum for sharing images, so it made sense for us to contribute already digitized images to this resource. Secondly, Flickr allows users to interact directly with images by tagging, commenting, downloading large files, sharing, and marking images as “favorites”. Finally, it allows us to bring our visual content to a wider audience and allow more people to discover the amazing diversity of field notes.

This first set includes 24 images from seven blog posts and represent field notes in a variety of formats (photographs, codices, sketches) and subject areas (Botany, Herpetology, Mammalogy, Ichthyology). They represent some of our favorite collections and collectors. We hope that you enjoy the images as much as we do. To read more about something that strikes you, follow the url in the caption to the related blog post. Enjoy!

When describing archival holdings, context is essential. For example, the Smithsonian has numerous items from the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition, but it is important to know that botanist Frederick Vernon Coville’s field books will have a different focus than paleontologist William Healey Dall’s. Describing the “who, what, when, where and why” is how we understand items cataloged within the Field Book Registry.

When the Field Book Project started, we gave a considerable amount of thought to descriptive standards that would form the framework for all the data we collect. Among those chosen was Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families. EAC-CPF is a standard that primarily addresses the description of individuals, families and corporate bodies that create, preserve, use, and are responsible for and/or associated with records in a variety of ways.

The details of the standard are probably only interesting to a select few who like discussing the minutiae of XML tags, coding and cataloging. While part of my job is to be involved with and implement those details, the most exciting part, to me, is how this standard can help researchers understand and find information in the Field Book Registry and beyond.

At the most basic level, creating a biography for a person who authored a field book allows one to see their personal and educational background, their research specialty, and where and when they conducted their work.

EAC-CPF also helps make cataloging more efficient, and can make virtual links to materials dispersed among various places. Even within the Registry, there are field books from the same person or expedition that “live” in various departments at the National Museum of Natural History and/or the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Creating one EAC-CPF record allows us to link one history to many field books, no matter where they are located. As the Field Book Registry grows beyond cataloging Smithsonian items, that one EAC-CPF record can also link to items from around the world. This has always been a driving goal for the project: helping a researcher interested in a particular person, expedition or other topic find primary resources from many repositories.

At a broader level, it also allows us to link a person’s biography to details about the places they worked, the expeditions in which they participated, and other individuals. EAC-CPF helps outline an historical social network. Not only can a researcher find links to materials from that one person for whom they started their search, but they can also find resources concerning the organizations and people associated with that person.

If I wanted to search for field books created by naturalist Edgar Alexander Mearns, I would find that his research is documented in various departments at the National Museum of Natural History, and in the Smithsonian Archives. The Registry can locate all the sites for those resources. Mearns’s biography links him to the Smithsonian-Theodore Roosevelt African Expedition, which in turn has its own expedition history, which links to other personnel on the trip. Now I can look into his “network,” which includes mammalogist Edmund Heller, Theodore Roosevelt, and Roosevelt’s son Kermit, and naturalist John Alden Loring. While my search started with a specific focus, I can now see if following Mearns’ network will lead me to related materials that answer my research questions. It can offer quite valuable leads with relative ease, and that’s what we hope EAC-CPF records will offer to those who use the Field Book Registry.

In the near future the Registry will share EAC-CPF records with the Social Networks and Archival Context Project (SNAC), a prototype for a national registry of records that will point to hundreds of thousands of collections and resources in field book repositories around the world.

Tammy Peters is the Supervisory Archivist at Smithsonian Institution Archives. She serves as a collaborator and advisor to the Field Book Project.

Monday, 10 September 2012

When the Field Book Project kicked off in 2010, we were
setting out to catalog all of the biodiversity field books at the Smithsonian,
for a total of 6,000 field books, by the end of 2012. Today, I am excited to share that we have
reached that milestone nearly four months ahead of schedule!

Over the last couple of years, we’ve discovered that there
are well over 6,000 field books, currently estimated at over 8,000, so we will
continue cataloging and blogging about what we find. We’ve discovered a lot of other things as
well, and so I can’t help feeling what better time to look back on what we’ve
found and look forward to where we’re going.

Field books come in
many shapes and sizes

If you’ve been reading our blog for awhile, you’ve probably
come across our musings on just what exactly
is a field book. The more obvious
formats are handwritten notes and journals.
For more visually-oriented scientists, sketches, maps and photographs
can comprise a substantial portion of their field notes. Some of my personal favorites are those that
combine the textual with the visual such as Moynihan’s illustrated notes or
Chapin’s scrapbook approach.

Of course, the shape and size of field books also vary from
collector to collector and from year to year.
Changes in manufacturing processes for paper, book binding and
photographic processes have contributed to the wide variety of note taking
materials ranging from quintessential government issued green journals to stereographs
and lantern slides. For an overview of
these and other formats, see the timeline in Field
Books Through the Ages: A Visual Timeline.

Field books provide
useful information for many different types of research

There is no “right way” to take field notes and so it’s not
surprising that field notes can vary greatly from collector to collector. Anne Van Camp, Director of the Smithsonian
Institution Archives and a Principal Investigator on the Field Book Project, notes
that:

(Some field books) go way beyond just documenting the
collecting and really record a much richer personal description of the whole
process of exploration and collecting.
It surprised me how rich these things really are. I think the whole process of understanding
scientific exploration of the environment is really fascinating on so many
levels. I think there’s something
exciting in it for everyone.

The purely scientific data and observations which form a
large component of field book content are not only extremely interesting, but
also useful for answering some big research questions. In his post The
Living Legacy of Field Research at the Smithsonian, Secretary Clough discusses
how field work can reveal clues about both the causes and effects of climate
change through the study of fossils and provide insights into how similar
changes might impact us today. More
recent notes can also be useful in understanding what changes have occurred
over a shorter time space. Caitlin
McDonough MacKenzie, a graduate student in Boston University’s Biology
program, recently guest blogged for us on a set of field notes from the 1880’s,
which she’ll use as the basis for a comparative analysis as she re-surveys
Mount Desert Island’s contemporary flora. For me, this kind of historical comparison,
which field books enable, is one of the most powerful illustrations of the
relevance of field notes to contemporary scientific research.

Looking Ahead

As we continue cataloging the Smithsonian field book
collections, we are also moving forward on some of our short and long term
goals for making this content widely available.
Our larger vision for the Field Book Project is to not only deliver a
public facing, online database of all of this rich content but to extend that
into a Field Book Registry to accept content from institutions beyond the
Smithsonian.

Rusty Russell, Collections Program Manager of the
Department of Botany and a Principal Investigator on the Field Book Project
describes his vision for the future of the Field Book Project:

Longer term, we
will invest in technologies to provide word level access to field book content
for a broad range of scholarly study, and to compose triplets [that describe
relationships between species, places and dates] to support studies of
biological and planetary changes.

Those efforts will involve both existing and emerging
technologies and we’re looking forward to collaborating with potential Field
Book Registry contributors, technologists, and the researchers who will use the
Registry to explore those technologies and make this content widely accessible
for a variety of research purposes.

Where would you like to see the project go from here? Let us know in the comments!

As a summer pre-program conservation intern with the Smithsonian Center for Archives Conservation, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of book and paper objects. The Center for Archives Conservation is a treatment laboratory located at the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) that provides conservation services for SIA’s permanent collections, as well as for sister archives and special collections within the Smithsonian community. Primarily I have worked on field books, paper objects from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). As my time here is ending, I thought I’d share with you all some of the work I’ve been doing: the field books of Harrison G. Dyar.

Harrison Gray Dyar (1826-1929) was a leading early 20th century entomologist who greatly refined the description of moths and mosquitoes and our understanding of their life cycles. Well known and deeply opinionated, Dyar was able to devise calculations on how to measure the growth of insects, while also discovering new species.

Though to some Dyar’s scientific focus could seem dry, no one could say that of his personal life. Dyar married his first wife, Zella Peabody in 1889, and they had two children, Dorothy and Otis Dyar. By 1914, many suspected Dyar of having two families in Washington, D.C.—one with Zella and one with Wellesca Pollack Allen. Dyar obtained a divorce from his wife Zella in 1916 and married Allen in 1921, adopting Allen’s 3 sons, Wilfred P., Harrison G., and Wallace P. (thought to be his) upon their marriage. Additionally, Dyar dug tunnels beneath his two homes in D.C. These tunnels extended as deep as 32 feet and were multi-level with concrete walls. Discovered in 1924, the press hypothesized their creation by German spies. Dyar publicly claimed them as his pastime. His intriguing personal life, however, did not disrupt his work for the USDA and the National Museum (now the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History) as the Custodian of the National Lepidoptera Collections from 1897 until his death in 1929.

Dyar was a prolific researcher and created 29 “Blue Books” with notes on the numerous specimens he collected and observed. Dyar was thrifty despite being independently wealthy. Some of these books were new and meant specifically for note taking, whereas others were originally designed for different purposes. The latter included a day planner, numerous grocery store receipt books (where Zella wrote their grocery transactions–Dyar wrote between her script), as well as his mother’s household ledger.

These varied types of books have necessitated a range of treatment types to ensure their readiness for digitization. Some books required simple mends to tears with Japanese paper (thin, long fibered paper known for flexible strength) and wheat starch paste, while making sure all of his inserted notes (such as on the backs of checks) are in their own safe little envelopes. Some inserts even contained beautiful watercolors of the specimens! During this process, I have grown to understand Dyar’s working method. He does not number his pages, but places them in chronological order of his numbered specimens and records his observations. It took working on a few books before both the cataloger and I figured this out!

This knowledge was extremely helpful when working with other books that necessitate more extensive care, for example, those with pages that have ripped free from the binding, are out of order, and are in danger of being lost. These books required more time as I needed to disbind the book into its individual pamphlets and then resew it. (For further details on this process, check out an awesome earlier Field Book Project blog post by conservator Anna Friedman!). This process is particularly satisfying as I know I have improved the longevity of the object, while also aiding in the researcher’s understanding of the object.

As my time here winds down and I finish the Dyar collection, it has reminded me of the many shapes, sizes, and ways field notebooks are created by different scientists. I thought I’d share some of the variety with you all that I have been so fortunate to work with this summer. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I have enjoyed working on them!

Resources

Epstein, Marc E. and Pam Henson. (1992). Digging for dyar: The man behind the myth. The American Entomologist, 38(3), 148-169.

A sizable portion of field books we’ve cataloged document field work in the US National Parks. It seems logical. National park sites are chosen and preserved because they are unique natural resources; environments like these are bound to attract researchers as well as require environmental monitoring. A cursory search of our catalog records yields results on field notes taken in national parks from 1879 to the 1970’s, around 100 years worth of observations and collecting. However, it is the early years of collecting in national parks that most fascinate me.

I realized while looking through the chronology and content of the materials we’ve cataloged, that the earliest materials document a period of time when the nation was still figuring out how to best manage these sites. The first park, Yellowstone National Park, was established in 1872. Field books about Yellowstone National Park date back to 1887 or earlier in our collection, which is fascinating when considering that the National Park Service (NPS) wasn’t created until 1916. Before NPS, responsibility for managing historical and natural landmarks resided with the War Department and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture. (More about the early management of these landmarks is found on the National Park Service website). Furthermore, the field work documented for locations like Yosemite National Park (established 1890) and Grand Canyon (established 1919) extends decades before their national park status. We have field books for work conducted in the Grand Canyon by Charles D. Walcott in the 1870’s; C. Hart Merriam in 1889; and J. W. Toumey in 1892. William Brewer’s field books document collecting in Yosemite Valley in 1862 – 1865.

I contemplated the range of topics I could discuss about national parks before realizing I had the chance to share one of my first “finds”. During my first months of cataloging, I worked on the field notes of Charles Doolittle Walcott. He is best known for his work in the mountains of British Columbia and the discovery of the Burgess Shale. Some of his oldest field books, dating back to 1870’s, document time he spent in the Grand Canyon. I have included a few sketches from his collection below.

The first sketch is from 1879, when Walcott was working in the Kanab Canyon along the north rim for the USGS. The subsequent sketches document Chuar Valley, Grand Canyon, Arizona, c. 1883, and most likely were drawn by B. L. Young who accompanied Walcott.

Sketch of Kanab Canyon by Charles D. Walcott during his field work for the US Geological Survey, October 15 - November 3, 1879. Smithsonian Institution Archives. RU007004, Box 32, Folder 1. SIA SIA2012-9643 .

These drawings show different levels of drawing acumen and were created for different purposes. Walcott’s sketch with a note indicating the location of his tent marked “yours truly” seems to be for the purpose of showing the immense scale of the canyon. B. L. Young’s dramatic depictions of the valley probably prove a more accurate recording of the valleys current geological state. However, both sets of drawings impart important information about the scale and beauty of the region.

This grandeur of scale, biodiversity, and beauty of the Grand Canyon and other National Parks has been depicted in countless other researchers' field notes for well over 100 years. These notes stand as a testament to the enduring quality and importance of our nation's parks.

Thursday, 19 July 2012

The Field Book Project would like to introduce two upcoming blog posts contributed by cataloging interns, Richard Jerome and Alice Doolittle. (Read their bios here).

Richard Jerome has been cataloging field books at the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the National Museum of Natural History Division of Birds. Richard’s blog post, New Animals in New Places, looks at the issue of invasive species, and highlights an interesting anecdote found in the field book of Alexander Wetmore. Richard’s post will go up tomorrow, July 20th.

Alice Doolittle has continued cataloging the large collection of POBSP (Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program) materials at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. She has also started cataloging field books in the National Museum of Natural History Division of Fishes. You can look for a blog post by Alice in early August.

We’d like to thank our interns for all of their hard work. Stay tuned to get a glimpse into what they’ve been up to this summer!

Monday, 16 July 2012

Deborah Bell and students in the U.S. National Herbarium. 2012. Photograph by Field Book Project.

Deborah Bell and students in the mounting room. 2012. Photograph by Field Book Project.

Students look at Department of Botany field books. 2012. Photograph by Field Book Project.

Last Wednesday, the Field Book Project received Dr. Eric Elton and 11 of his 9th-12th grade ecology students from The Bryn Mawr School (Baltimore, MD). Dr. Elton and his students were given a tour of U.S. National Herbarium specimens and field books in the Department of Botany. Deborah Bell, Collections Management in the Department of Botany, displayed samples of herbarium specimens, disucussing the history, depth, and breath of the collection. Later students were taken to explore a variety of field books of botanists from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Thursday, 12 July 2012

View of French battleship, Richelieu, with buoys in the foreground marking the top of the anti-submarine net in port of Dakar, Senegal, 1940. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7293

Many field books contain observations of the effects of major world events, such as war. Read about geologist Bohumil Shimek's field trip through a war-torn Europe and what he saw there in this poignant article by cataloger Lesley Parilla on The Bigger Picture:

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

The Field Book Project is grateful to have five interns from the fields of conservation and digitization working with us this summer: Blair Bailey, Janelle Batkin, Catherine Cox, Cherie Edmonds, and Alison Pinches. Four of the interns were funded through a generous grant from the Smithsonian Women's Committee (SWC) that the Smithsonian Institution Archives recieved earlier this year. Learn more about these talented individuals below. Also, be sure to visit this link for information about our cataloging interns. Check back later this summer to learn about these interns' conservation and digitization projects.

Blair Bailey is originally from Cincinnati, OH and received a BA in Art History and a BA in History from American University in Washington, D.C. in 2011. The Smithsonian Field Book Project is a great opportunity for Blair to gain additional practical experience prior to applying to a formal Master’s program in Art Conservation. Her previous conservation experience includes painting and paper conservation at the National Portrait Gallery, a paint mixture conservation research assistantship at the Museum Conservation Institute, glass object experience at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and archaeological objects conservation for Historic St. Mary’s City in Maryland. Blair's internship was made possible through funding from SWC.

Blair Bailey, 2012. Credit: Sarah Stauderman.

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Janelle Batkin is originally from Ithaca, NY and received an AAS in Photography and a BFA in Art Restoration from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, NY. In 2011, She earned an AA in Art from Montgomery College, Takoma Park/Silver Spring, MD. The Smithsonian Field Book Project is a great opportunity for Janelle to gain additional practical experience prior to applying to a formal Master’s program in Art Conservation. Her previous conservation experiences include the treatment of mural paintings, gilded stone surfaces, and archaeological objects.﻿ Janelle's internship was made possible through funding from SWC.

﻿﻿Janelle Batkin, 2012. Credit: Sara Stauderman.

Catherine Cox is currently a graduate student at George Mason University. The internship at the Smithsonian Institution Archives is part of the curriculum for earning her M.A. in Applied History. Catherine feels working with the Field Book Project has provided her with valuable experience to begin her career in archives and the preservation of historical information and cultural heritage. She looks forward to pursuing future opportunities to work with audiovisual materials, such as sound recordings and oral histories.﻿﻿﻿ Catherine's internship was made possible with funding from SWC.

Catherine Cox, 2012 Credit: Kira Cherrix.

Cherie Edmonds is a 2nd year Master's student at the University of Michigan - School of Information, where she is also Treasurer for the student chapter of the Special Library Association, and Recruiting Chair for the Multi-Ethnic Information Exchange. Her specializations are Archives and Records Management, and Preservation of Information. She is centering her studies around digital preservation, and is particularly interested in image, sound, and motion preservation. She started working on the Field Book Project this past Winter during her school's Alternative Spring Break program, in which students spend their Spring breaks volunteering their time with various organizations around the country in order to gain practical experience. She returned this summer on an internship in order to continue her work digitizing and recording metadata for the Field Book Project. Cherie's internship was made possible with funding from SWC.

Cherie Edmonds, 2012. Credit: Emily Hunter.

Alison Pinches is a recent graduate from the University of Calgary, (Alberta, Canada) with a bachelor's degree in Arts, majoring in History. Alison is interested in pursuing a Master's degree in Library Sciences and wanted to explore opportunities outside of library settings. Her eight week internship is funded by the government of Alberta.

Monday, 02 July 2012

Thanks to everyone who visited our table in the Smithsonian Council of Scholars (SCOS) Research Tent at the Folklife Festival to take our quiz! If you didn't have a chance, you can still test your own knowledge of field book authors.

Sunday, 01 July 2012

﻿The Field Book Project team will be on the National Mall as part of the Smithsonian Council of Scholars (SCOS) Research Tent at the Folklife Festival. We'll be talking about the project and sharing images of field book. Participate in our quiz for a chance to win your very own pocksized field notebook (limited supply). Monday, July 2, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Friday, 29 June 2012

﻿Smithsonian YES! (Youth Engagement through Science) delve into field notes of Smithsonian Botanists from the late 19th / early 20th century. Photo by Field Book Project.

Tuesday, the Field Book Project welcomed 25 students from the Smithsonian YES! (Youth Engagement through Science) summer program into the National Museum of Natural History Main Library stacks to view field books from the Department of Botany. Students explored nine original field books created between 1897 and 1946, each field book highlighting different aspects of note taking. During their internships, YES students will create their own field notes while working with Smithsonian scientists. Forensic Anthropology Lab Educator Nicole Webster was charged with developing the students’ field book curriculum and the yellow notebooks seen in the photo above. Webster has agreed to blog for the Field Book Project at the end of the summer, so please check back for more about field notes from the YES! students.

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

In January, I began cataloging field books in the Department of Botany. In my first week, I came across a box of materials related to the botanist André Goeldi. These materials had a note from our conservator that read “Extremely brittle!” Carefully, I opened the folder and gasped as I saw the contents--black and white photographs of botanical specimens, mostly grasses. Each one was stunning. The photographs themselves were “silvering” (also called silver mirroring)--something that happens to older black and white gelatin prints, in which the silver particles begin to oxidize, producing a blue-ish metallic look. Although a conservation problem, the silver mirroring gave the images an otherworldly glow.

The photographs depicted specimens, set upon a black background, with a tape measure in many of the images to indicate scale. The photographs were clearly taken to document Goeldi’s specimen collection, but it’s hard to deny their aesthetic merit as well. Grass is something usually taken for granted as common, but seeing the variety of grasses depicted in these 36 photographs made me think twice about the familiar plant family. Isolated clumps shown on the dark background gave focus to the form, while highlighting the elegance (and the occasionally tangled chaos) of some of these plants.

I examined the contents of the folder for clues about the materials and their creator. A letter included with the photographs indicated that the images were sent to Albert Spear Hitchcock in 1920. Hitchcock was an expert on grasses, and presumably he and Goeldi corresponded regarding the identification or perhaps the exchange of the specimens. Also included with the photographs were specimen lists, with entries in Portuguese. These lists, handwritten on an extremely acidic paper, were even more brittle than the photographs. Some of the information had even crumbled away from the edges. After consulting with our conservator, I digitized the entire contents of the Goeldi box. This way, the information is captured digitally in case the physical objects wear down and lose additional information. From these images, I selected several of the most interesting to make up the flickr set.

List of grasses sent with photographs by André Goeldi to A. S. Hitchcock in 1920. SIA Acc. 12-045.

I was interested to find out who André Goeldi was. My initial research returned few results. I knew that André Goeldi was working in Pará, Brazil circa 1913 to 1920, and that he was not the same person as Emílio A. Goeldi, first director of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. I dug into the archives and also reached out to the Museu Goeldi to see if they had additional information. To my delight, Dr. Nelson Sanjad, researcher, History of Science at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, responded to my email and offered additional details on Goeldi’s life. Dr. Sanjad helped to fill in many of the gaps, informing me that Goeldi (name variation Andréas Goeldi) was born in Switzerland in 1872 and immigrated to Brazil in 1893. He worked at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi from 1901 to 1906 and then at the experimental farm Estação Agrícola de Peixe Boi. Dr. Sanjad also informed me that Emílio and André were cousins. The correspondence with A. S. Hitchcock dated 1920 may be the last documented mention of André Goeldi’s activities, so perhaps he died shortly after.

This set of field documentation serves as an example of how materials from all over the world end up in the care of the Smithsonian Institution. Curating this set of images sparked an interesting journey for me, and required the collaboration of colleagues across various fields at home at the Smithsonian as well as abroad. The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the Field Book Project was something that initially attracted me to apply as an intern over a year ago. I hope that you enjoy learning about the process of bringing these images to the public sphere, and I encourage you to share any comments or additional information on the man behind these photographs.

Thank you very much to the following people for their assistance with various aspects of this project: Dr. Nelson Sanjad, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Pará, Brazil; Anna Friedman and the conservation staff at Smithsonian Institution Archives; Tad Bennicoff and reference team at Smithsonian Institution Archives; Kira Cherrix and the digitization staff at Smithsonian Institution Archives; and all of my colleagues at the Field Book Project.

Monday, 11 June 2012

We have cataloged 5,000 field books, generated by collectors across the National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Institution Archives. These include more than 400 collections encompassing botany, entomology, ornithology, ichthyology, herpetology, mammalogy, and invertebrate zoology just to name a few. Collections with confirmed dates range from 1815 to 2008. Cataloged items cover every continent – including Antarctica and northern Polar Regions. They encompass journals, videos, photographs, scrap books, diaries, correspondence, slides (including stereographic), species lists, maps…should I continue?

View of warehouses and boats in the port of Macao [Macau] taken by A. S. Hitchcock, 1921. Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA2011-0565.

Taken by Waldo Schmitt off the coast of Palmer Peninsula, Antarctica, 1962-1963. Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA2012-0666.

After cataloging so many field books, some interesting trends emerged. Here are a few highlights of what we have found while cataloging.

A Growing Nation

Early collecting trips were often surveys of newly acquired American territories -- Oregon, Nebraska, and Alaska, for example. Individuals like J. A. Cooper traveled along with military and other participants between forts and new settlements, collecting as much information as possible about vegetation and wildlife. Recorded observations frequently include details about agricultural and commercial possibilities. Often these types of field books are journals with descriptions of communities and inhabitants of these regions.

September 19, 1940, during Alaska King Crab Investigation with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA2012-0672a.

Economic Needs

Some collections like those of the Bureau of Fisheries and Bureau of Biological Survey (later to merge and become the Department of Fish and Wildlife) were born out of economic needs. The Bureau of Fisheries came out of a commission established by the US Congress to study the health and locations of fishing grounds. Field books document interviews with local watermen and surveys of locations about the presence and stability of marine life along all major US coastlines.

In a similar vein, the US Biological Survey was created under the US Department of Agriculture, initially studying geographical distributions of flora and fauna and the interplay when relating to control of agricultural pests. The field books of the US Biological Survey often discuss agricultural needs alongside investigations for the creation of nature preserves and refuges, helping to balance economic and conservation needs.

Contemporary Accounts

Journals, correspondence, and diaries can contain fascinating details about contemporary life. Field books at the Smithsonian relate details about interactions with contemporaries, descriptions of communities, and sometimes even food encountered in foreign countries. Some of the most memorable accounts include William and Lucile Mann describing the conditions in European zoos during World War II; Bohumil Shimek’s challenges leaving Europe at the outbreak of World War I; Waldo Schmitt traveling with Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Galapagos in 1938; and William Dall’s interactions with Russians just prior to the purchase of Alaska.

Plan of the Day from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1938 Cruise to the Galapagos. Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA2012-0050.

Page 2 of the Plan of the Day from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1938 Cruise to the Galapagos. SIA2012-0051.

Recording Biodiversity

Field books often include more than one scientific discipline. Many scientists focused on two or three areas of interest, especially those collecting in the nineteenth century. Some, like the field books of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque can include up to five different disciplines.

Relationships between Federal Agencies

Interagency collaboration is not a new concept. Just look through a few NMNH department field book collections. Several departments at Natural History have long-term, deep connections with other agencies. These sometimes remain intact even as federal departments evolve and merge. Smithsonian collections include field books created by military officers (United States Exploring Expedition, also known as the Wilkes Expedition, was headed by US Navy), Bureau of Fisheries, US Department of Agriculture, and Department Fish and Wildlife.

In all, it has been thrilling to see the range of field work documented across the Institution. I think all of us at the Field Book Project will agree it has been a fascinating journey thus far, and look forward to seeing what we find next.

Friday, 08 June 2012

Botany field books in National Museum of Natural History library stacks, photo by Anna Friedman

Last summer, Field Book Project staff and interns began to catalog the hundreds of field books that are in the care of the Department of Botany. This summer, the Field Book Project has reached a significant milestone. As of this writing, the final collection of Botany field books is being cataloged -- at least for now. “At least for now” because while the current cache of Botany field books has been documented they, like all of the collections at the National Museum of Natural History, grow and diversify. Field books are still being “found”, and some day current staff will contribute their own field books. For now, the Field Book Project only catalogs the field notes of inactive collectors.

The numbers are far greater than the original estimates. To date the Field Book Project has cataloged 1,018 botanical field books created by 168 field biologists. Many of these field books have received special conservation attention from experts at the SI Archives, and now exist in a more controlled environment. We’ve created consistent records and access points that ultimately make the field books and their content more accessible to researchers. The short version? You will have an easier time finding and using these field books.

In 1980 former Botany Librarian Ruth Schallert prepared an inventory of field books being stored in the Botany Library. For more than two decades, this listing was the only electronically available field book resource on the NMNH website. In the course of cataloging, however, we have found that some of the field books were missing. Their current storage in the Natural History Library improves our ability to maintain and preserve the Botany field books. The task of digitally scanning field books has begun, and soon researchers will be able to locate field book items through the catalog by several access points (dates, creator, locality, and others) and be able to see and read the individual field book pages.

Field books are the original source of information for collecting activities and the resulting collections. They are, therefore, even more important than specimen labels. The impact of reaching this milestone in Botany is significant in terms of improved access to this critical data, all of which bodes well for research and collections programs in the Department.

Friday, 01 June 2012

The Field Book Project extends a warm welcome to our two Summer Cataloging Interns Richard Jerome and Alice Doolittle.

Richard Jerome, 2012. Photo by Carolyn Sheffield.

Richard Jerome lives in Washington, D.C. where he received his Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) in 2012 from the Library and Information Science program at Catholic University. He received his Bachelor's degree in English Literature and Philosophy from Colgate University in Hamilton, NY. In 2011 he completed a practicum in authorities cataloging for the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD. Richard is excited to work for the Smithsonian Institution, an organization he has always admired.

﻿Alice Doolittle, 2012. Photo by Carolyn Sheffield.

Alice Doolittle lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she recently completed her Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree at the University of Pittsburgh. Alice also holds an M.S. in wildlife conservation from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in biology from Yale. Having worked as a science teacher, field biologist, and a desk jockey at a conservation organization, Alice looking forward to combining her biology background with her library science training. She views the Smithsonian Field Book Project as a great opportunity for her goals and is excited to be contributing to and learning from the project this summer. She is also excited to be back on her native soil, Washington, D.C. ﻿

You will hear more from both Richard and Alice later this summer when they blog about their work, so keep reading.

Monday, 21 May 2012

The Field Book Project would like to remind you that May 22, 2012 is International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB). This year's theme is Marine Biodiversity. Visit the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) website to learn more about International Day for Biological Diversity and how you can help raise awareness of this year's theme.

The Field Book Project is an initiative to increase accessibility to field book content that documents natural history. Through ongoing partnerships within and beyond the Smithsonian Institution, the Project is making field books easier to find and available in a digital format for current research, as well as inspiring new ways of utilizing these rich information resources.